Moves to continue Sheffield support for vulnerable people after government funding ends
Last updated 28th Oct 2024
Proposals are being drawn up to support some of the most vulnerable people in Sheffield, including rough sleepers and addicts, once government funding for an award-winning programme finishes next year.
Sheffield City Council made a successful bid to the government’s Changing Futures programme in 2021. The programme funded 15 councils in England to test new ways to organise support for people living with severe and multiple disadvantage.
According to a council report, the four-year funding of £5.5m over four years “has directly supported over 150 individual people in the city to help get their lives back on track, and has changed services, systems and processes to better respond to the needs of some of the most vulnerable residents of the city”.
A meeting of the council’s adult health and social care policy committee next Wednesday (October 30) will hear that the programme has been highly regarded, both within the city and by the government team running the national project. It also won a national award.
The project targeted “people who are homeless or sleep rough, live with mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, suffer abuse and exploitation (for example ‘cuckooing’) and who are involved in crime or anti-social behaviour.
“For these people life can be an ongoing day-to-day struggle, as well as affecting the people around them and the communities they live in.” Cuckooing is where people’s lives and homes are taken over by criminal gangs and the programme came up with a protocol for dealing with those cases.
The report says: “The Sheffield programme has helped people turn their lives around. Street homelessness reduced by over 50%, twice as many people started treatment for drug or alcohol addiction, crime reduced and safeguarding referrals and attendances at A&E reduced significantly.”
Some people working with the service have gone on to take on volunteer roles, training and in some cases have found paid work. This is described in the report as “an amazing step up”.
Because the needs of people the programme has helped are complex, they often require multiple services at the same time which are not always coordinated around them, the report says. This can involve the council, the NHS, police, the probation service and voluntary and community sectors.
The report says: “With the right support, everyone can move forward. The key is ensuring that support is accessible, empathetic and joined up to ensure all needs are met.
“The ‘no wrong door’ approach is critical and wherever someone reaches out in the system, it must rally round them to offer the support they need in their recovery.”
The committee will be asked to approve an interim service to carry on delivering support while work is done to put in place a new service model from April 2026 to deliver support to vulnerable adults and families.
The report says: “The service will be designed to support people early enough so that they do not need more crisis services, for example through housing or
homelessness, social care or hospital.
“The service will have clear connections to other housing, care and health services to ensure that it plays a key role in the wider system of support for vulnerable people in the city.”
It says that the indicative budget for the new service would be in the region of £3.2m per year. The cost of keeping things going would be around £956,000.